Page 95 of Dead Girl Running

“Yes. That’s possible, too. I texted him and he never answered.”

“Be careful out there,” Max said.

“Be careful in here,” Kellen replied.

“No problem. I’m the Incredible Hulk, remember?”

“And I’m Wonder Woman.”

As she started to walk out, he caught her arm. “After this is over, we’ll need to talk.”

She took a breath. “Philadelphia?”

“You remember?”

Her heartbeat sped up.Confirmation.He was part, maybe all, of her forgotten past. “Not really.”

Heat shimmered in the air between them. They looked at each other, each searching for some remnant of the past, of passion remembered and passion forgotten.

“Later,” he said and let her go.

Later? There might not be a later. And she wanted toknow.

She leaned into him, settled against his big body, absorbed the heat and the muscled strength.

If he’d known her before—and she did believe him—he’d known her as a woman to be protected, to be handled with care. So he waited, his chest rising and falling with each desperate breath.

She slid her hands up his arms, around his neck, went on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his.

Still he waited.

So she turned a touch into a kiss and a kiss into sunshine and shadow, nuance and blatant lust. The long dark of the Washington winter disintegrated and became summer on a restless ocean where they drowned without breath, without care, without self.

She pulled back with a gasp—some parts of her body didn’t care if she drowned, but her lungs finally objected—and her hands trembled as she let them drop out of his hair.

At some point in the kiss, he had wrapped one arm around her waist, the other…

“Um, can you let go of my butt?” She looked everywhere but at his face. “I really need to go and, um…”

“Right.” The rumble of his voice was harsh, scratchy, and he released her reluctantly.

Well, sure. He was ready to go all the way. No mistaking that.

She slipped out of the security office and then the resort. She didn’t need this distraction. Not now. All these years…

She had never seen the grounds so deserted. The bitterly cold wind whipped through the grass, swirled chips of ground cover into the air like tiny wood shards aimed at the eyes. To the west, tall gray clouds sped toward her; the storm the weather people had predicted was arriving at last. Desolation hung over the resort, waiting for that moment when the tempest broke, when the blood spilled, when death or justice claimed the land.

Since when had Kellen become a fanciful idiot?

She didn’t know, and she didn’t like it, but as she drove the ATV toward Nils’s cottage, she felt exposed and hunched down to make herself a smaller target. Her Kevlar vest didn’t cover nearly enough flesh.

She parked and clattered up the stairs; no point in sneaking up on him, the man had a gun. She knocked loudly and yelled, “Nils!” then inserted her pass card and swung the door wide.

“Come in,” he called from the shadowy depths.

She texted Max,Found him, stashed her phone and walked into the cottage. She took one look at Nils stretched out in the easy chair, his feet elevated on the ottoman, and shut the door behind her. “You look worse for wear.”

He had a black eye that extended down to his jaw and an ice bag strapped to his left elbow.